Volume 1

A dictionary of Christian antiquities : being a continuation of the 'Dictionary of the Bible' / edited by William Smith and Samuel Cheetham ; illustrated by engravings on wood.

Date:: [between 1890 and 1899?]

Credit: A dictionary of Christian antiquities : being a continuation of the 'Dictionary of the Bible' / edited by William Smith and Samuel Cheetham ; illustrated by engravings on wood. Source: Wellcome Collection.

1078/1096 (page 1058)

$IV. St. Augustine’s expression, “All the faith- ful hear it ” (see above), seems to imply that in Africa the people did not repeat the Lord’s Prayer themselves in his time. When Gregory introduced it at Rome, he did not assign it to the congregation. “Among the Greeks, the Lord’s Prayer is said by all the people, but among us by the priest alone ” (^Epist. u. s.). Yet elsewhere in the Latin church they said it. That it was so in France in the 6th century is clear from a story in Gregory of Tours. A dumb woman “ on a certain Lord’s day stood with the rest of the people. But it came to pass that, when the Lord’s Prayer was said, she also opened her mouth and began to sing that holy prayer with the rest” {Mirac. S. Mart. ii. 30). In the Mozarabic Liturgy the people responded “ Amen” at the end of the first clause, and the first three petitions : after “ Give us this day our daily bread,” they re- sponded, “ for Thou art God” : after the two following petitions, “ Amen” : and after “ Lead us not into temptation,” they concluded with “ But deliver us from evil ” (Leslie, 6). In all the Eastern rites, as in their sources, St. James and St. Mark, this prayer is said by the people. In the Egyptian (Ken. i. 76, 77) and Syro-Jacobite (ii. 40, 131) they begin at “ Hallowed be,” &c. In the Nestorian, they say it all (Badger, Nes- torians, ii. 237 ; Renaud. ii. 595). V. St. Augustine more than once alludes to a custom of beating the breast when the words “ forgive us our trespasses ” were said in the liturgy : “ If we are without sin, and we beat our breasts, saying. Forgive, &c., in this very thing at least we sin, even gravely ; as no one can doubt; seeing that we lie while the very sacraments are being celebrated” {Serm. 351, 3, § 6. Similarly, Serm. 388, § 2). To what ex- tent this custom prevailed does not appear. For the form which followed the Lord’s Prayer in every ancient liturgy, see Embolismus. [W. E. S.] LORD’S SUPPER {Coena Domini, Coena Dominica, Aeliruou Kupjo/fJj'). 1. The primary notion was of the Last Supper of our Lord, at which the eucharist was instituted. That, says Hippolytus, A.D. 220, was the “ first table of the mystical supper ” (in Prov. ix. 1, Fragm.). St. Chrysostom, a.d. 398, commenting on 1 Cor. xi. 20, says that St. Paul, by using the w’oi’ds “ Lord’s Supper,” takes his hearers back to that “ evening in which the Lord delivered the awful mysteries ” (i/bm. 27, in Ep. 1, ad Cor. § 2). With this view, he argues, the apostle called rb &picrTou deiTTUoy, that which in practice was taken eai'ly in the day by the name commonly given to the meal which was eaten last {ihid.). Somewhat similarly Pseudo-Dionysius (probably about 520) : “ The common and peaceable par- ticipation of one and the same bread and cup . . . brings (us) to a sacred commemoration of the most divine and archetypal {apxi<Tvfi$6\ov) supper” (Eccl. Hierarch, c. iii. Cont. iii. § 1). Maximus, the commentator on this book, A.D. 660, here explains that “ the mystical supper of the Lord is said to be apx^fTvp^oKov, in relation to the divine mysteries now celebrated ” (Scho- lium in loo.'). The “ Lord’s Supper ” was, therefore, in the conception of the early ages of the church, in the first instance and emphati- cally, that supper of which our Lord partook Himself with His disciples the night before His death, and of which the first reception of the holy eucharist was conceived a part. II. For some length of time the eucharist was celebrated in connexion with a meal taken by the faithful in common, in resemblance of the Last Supper [Agape]. It is probable that at first the whole rite, agape and communion, was called the supper, or the Lord’s Supper, partly to veil the sacrament from unbelievers, and partly owing to the language of St. Paul in 1 Cor. xi. 20 being so understood. To illustrate this, we may mention that the word agape itself in one passage appears to cover both the meal and the sacrament. “ It is not lawful either to baptize or to make an agape apart from the bishop.” This is found in the epistle of St. Ignatius to the church at Smyrna (c. 8), one of those mentioned by Eusebius, and the passage itself is cited by Antiochus Monachus, A.D. 614 (Horn. 124; Migne, No. 89, col. 1822). Now when the compiler of the twelve epistles of Ignatius came to this passage, he expanded the words ayd-n-gv noiely thus : “ Nor to offer, or bring a sacrifice, or celebrate a feast ” (Soxfjp). See Cureton’s Coi'pus Ignatianum, 109. Ter- tullian in 198 describes the agape under the name of a supper: “ our Supper shews its nature by its name. It is called that which love is among the Greeks ” (Apol. 39). At a later period, when the agape was celebrated with the eucharist on one day of the year only, viz., Maundy Thursday, in commemoration of the institution of the sacrament on that day, it was still called the Lord’s Supper. E.g. the council of Carthage, A.D. 397, decrees that the “ sacraments of the altar be celebrated only by men fasting excepting on that one day in every year on which the Lord’s Supper is celebrated ” (can. 29). Three years later St. Augustine, speaking of the custom of bathing at the end of Lent, says that “ for this purpose that day was rather chosen in which the Lord’s Supper is yearly celebrated” (Epid. 54, vii. § 10). Again, “We compel no one to break their fast (prandere) before that Lord’s Supper, but neither do we dare to forbid any one” (ibid. § 9). In 691 the council of Constantinople (can. i. 29) cites the canon of Carthage, as given above, and abolishes the pei’mission which it left. III. The eucharist was the chief part of the Lord’s Supper, whether that name was applied to the occasion of its institution or to the united observance of the first period after Christ. Hence it was almost inevitable that when the unessential part of that observance was^ropped, the name should adhere to the sacrament. Some of the Fathers, indeed, thought, as we shall see, that St. Paul applied it directly to the eucharist in 1 Cor. xi. 20 ; so that the designation had a double origin. It is necessary to bring many testimonies to the extent of this usage, because it has been rashly denied, in a polemical spirit (by Maldonatus, Suarez, and others), that the sacrament was called the “ Lord’s Supper,” or a “ supper,” however qualified, in the early church. Our earliest witne.ss is Tertullian, who paraphrasing the words of St. Paul in 1 Cor. X. 21, says, “ We cannot eat the supper of God and the supper of devils ” (de Spect. 13). When Hippolytus, as above, calls the institfltion “ the Jirst table of the mystical supper,” h«$